Weekend Box Office Report: Welcome to Week 2 of Pennywise’s Reign

It's now been two weekends since Pennywise the Dancing Clown was unleashed upon unsuspecting audiences, and Hollywood may never be the same. Seriously. The kind of box office numbers we're seeing right now will inspire, uh, major changes in how Hollywood tries to jump on specific trends. And while two new movies made a sort of solid showing for themselves over the weekend, the fact is this: it's Pennywise's world. We're just living in it. Here's the box office projections as of Sunday afternoon:

Film

Weekend

Per Screen

1

It

$60,000,000 (-51%)

$14,465

$218,710,619

2

American Assassin

$14,800,000

$4,692

$14,800,000

3

mother!

$7,500,000

$3,167

$7,500,000

4

Home Again

$5,334,160 (-37%)

$1,757

$17,135,244

5

The Hitman’s Bodyguard

$3,550,000 (-26%)

$1,085

$70,357,040

6

Annabelle: Creation

$2,600,000 (-35%)

$1,228

$99,900,361

7

Wind River

$2,553,586 (18%)

$975

$29,122,401

8

Leap!

$2,117,930 (-13%)

$877

$18,659,716

9

Spider-Man: Homecoming

$1,875,000 (-6%)

$1,306

$330,262,248

10

Dunkirk

$1,305,000 (-29%)

$883

$185,141,652

Now, I would typically start the Weekend Box Office Report with the new releases, but let’s be honest: is there anyone out there who would rather talk about American Assassinthan It? I didn’t think so. With $60 million dollars in its second weekend, It is now the highest-grossing Stephen King adaptation of all time by a fairly healthy margin; in a few days, it should be able to say the same about adjusted grosses as well. This is another dominating weekend for the horror film, which is also now one of the highest-grossing domestic releases of 2017 (less than a million behind Loganin seventh place). We’ve already seen a few Stephen King adaptations get fast-tracked since the film’s gigantic opening weekend, but it’ll still be a few weeks before we fully appreciate the changes It will spark in Hollywood offices. And all of this for only $35 million. My goodness.

OK, now we’ll do the new releases. In second place this weekend is American Assassin with $14.8 million. Earlier this week, studio sources told The Wrap that they would consider the film a success with a $14 million start as it would “match the opening made by John Wick in 2014,” and that’s exactly what American Assassin managed to do. That’s a pretty solid return for a film with only a $33 million budget, but it speaks well to fans’ appreciation of Dylan O’Brien and the resurgent career of Michael Keaton. Now, if only the studio executives can remember to make the sequel less like the movie’s boring first hour and more like its absolutely bananas last 30 minutes, we might just have a bonafide John Wick Jr. on our hands!

In third place this weekend was mother!, aka the film that launched a thousand think-pieces, and don’t let all the noise about CinemaScores and Jennifer Lawrence hurricanes distract you: $7.5 million dollars in an opening weekend isn’t the worst thing to happen to a Darren Aronofsky film, especially considering that the movie opened on the smaller side of a wide release in only 2,368 theaters. Black Swan may be the movie everyone wants to compare mother! to, but he’s never been a huge earner outside of that film; The Fountain cost $35 million and grossed only $10.1, while Noah earned $101 million domestically against a budget of $125 million. The lesson here seems to be pretty simple: when Aronofsky’s films are released in limited markets and slowly rolled out, as with Black Swan and The Wrestler, they end up in the black. When the studios try to treat him as a multiplex filmmaker, however, his box office struggles.

That does it for the new releases (and It), so let’s power through some of the movies we’ve seen week-in and week-out for the past month. In fourth place this week is Home Again, which grossed $5.3 million and seems to still be acting as a smart piece of counter-programming against genre films. It may be a pretty slight entry in an already slight genre, but outgrossing your budget in two weekends — and only dropping 37% in your second — is the sort of thing that sends studio executives home happy. In fifth place is The Hitman’s Bodyguard, which continues to outpace expectations and earned $3.5 million in fifth place. A lot of films outside the Top 3 featured minimal drops this weekend and The Hitman’s Bodyguard was no different, only falling 26% and nudging its overall gross up to $70.3 million. I, for one, look forward to the inevitable release of The Hitman’s Bodyguard’s Bodyguard.

In sixth place with $2.6 million this weekend is Annabelle: Creation, which is projected to just miss out on the $100 million mark through Sunday evening. Seriously: the movie is estimated to end up at $99.9 million dollars by the end of the day, which means that if only a few thousand more people in the United States chose to saw Annabelle: Creation this weekend, it would’ve hit that nice, round number that studios like so much. Think of the poor, demonically possessed children! In seventh place this weekend is Wind River, which has officially pushed past Hell or High Wateron writer-director’s Taylor Sheridan’s list of box office accomplishments. A sluggish August at the box office, plus the gradual improvements of Wind River, might just make this a sleeper Oscar contender worth keeping an eye on. Exposure and praise is a potent combination.

In eighth place is Leap!, which grossed $2.1 million and is now up over $100 million dollars at the global box office. As far as animated movies go, it may not have caught on with American audiences, but that didn’t prevent it from being a success. In ninth place is Spider-Man: Homecoming, which absolutely refuses to die — seriously, it only dropped 6% at the box office since last week — and is now only six million away from cracking into the holy trinity of Sam RaimiSpider-Man movies at the box office. Gonna be a photo finish. And finally, rounding out the list is Dunkirk, whose $1.3 million means it’s about to exit the Top 10 with $185 million in the domestic bank and $500 million worldwide. There’s Nolan’s Batman movies and then there’s everything else.